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Sandy Dietrich-Bell said when she arrived at the centre seven years ago, the average age of a young person at Reaching Our Outdoor Friends (ROOF) was 22. Now it’s 18 or 19.

The centre helps people age 12 to 25 who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. An emergency shelter opened in 2010 provides beds for those 16 to 25.

The number of youth using ROOF’s services has risen, Dietrich-Bell said.

“A lot more youth are experiencing homelessness. Their numbers rise every year,” she said.

In 2003, ROOF helped 2,500 teens. Last year, that rose to 3,750.

Many young people are bouncing from friend to friend, known as couch-surfing, she said.

“They seem so old for what they are,” Dietrich-Bell said. “There’s a lot more depression, suicidal ideation and hopelessness — a lot more feelings of isolation.

“We’re not raising this generation with the same ability to cope as our grandparents did. Children are having children. They never learned how to cope.”

She sees more teens with concurrent disorders. They’re addicted to drugs and struggling with mental illness ? sometimes undiagnosed.

Teens are referred to ROOF by the courts, teachers who notice a child wearing the same clothes for a week after being kicked out, and families who have thrown up their hands, she said.

Staff help them by building trust and rapport, she said.

“You have to be able to meet the youth where they’re truly at. It starts with just caring about them. We don’t judge them or label them.”

Teenagers then feel “this person sees me instead of all my mistakes and failings,” she said. “It helps them to feel engaged, cared about. They’ve come from a place where people have not been there consistently for them.”

It’s not easy for teens to survive on their own, Dietrich-Bell said.

“It’s a dangerous world out there when you have nowhere to go.”

Predators are waiting to take advantage of vulnerable youth who are “naive and ill equipped,” she said. “They fall prey. They’re tempted to do things they wouldn’t normally do.”

She recalls a girl who left the shelter after finding her own place. She returned periodically, and staff noticed she wasn’t her usual bubbly self.

They questioned her and discovered her landlord told her that, as part of her rental agreement, she had to have sex with him and his friend. She thought it was legal.

“There’s only a couple I have to sleep with,” she told Dietrich-Bell.

Another young woman went to see an apartment where the landlord installed cameras in the rooms. He said it was part of the security system in the building. ROOF staff set her straight.

In the past seven years, ROOF has lost eight youth to murder or suicide. The most recent was Kelsey Louise Felker, a 24-year-old whose torso was found in a dumpster outside a Kitchener apartment building last month.

“She was known to us,” Dietrich-Bell said. “We did what we could to support her.”

She came in for food, showers and to do laundry, leading staff to believe she didn’t have a home.

“People say she chose a risky lifestyle. I would argue it chose her,” she said. “Sometimes your life is forced upon you when you’re too young to do anything about it.”

Dietrich-Bell was recently explaining her job at ROOF to her young daughter. She summed it up this way: “Mommy helps these youth learn how to dream again.”

“It breaks my heart that at 17, you’re resigned to ‘this is what my life is going to be’ when it could be so much more,” she said.

She once watched a teenager stare at a pot on the stove at ROOF. She couldn’t figure out what he was doing. He finally admitted he didn’t know how to turn on a stove or boil water.

Not everyone has “the privilege of having a family that teaches them those little things,” she said.

The centre’s motto: “We’ll do with you, but we won’t do for you,” she said. “I’ll do the laundry with you, but not for you.”

The agency receives funding from the United Way, the Astley Family Foundation, the K-W Community Foundation, the Trillium Foundation, the Region of Waterloo, Rotary clubs, local realtors, and individual, church and corporate donations.

The 2013 budget is just under $900,000. Seven years ago, the budget totalled $280,000.

Teens leave the shelter for different reasons. They find their own place, return home if it’s safe, leave the region, get a job, return to school or move in with friends or extended family, Dietrich-Bell said.

“Sadly, there are some who cycle through the system. We see them again in a few months.”